slipped off, and I was sprawling on a wet deck with no breath in
me and a gallon of brine in my windpipe.

I heard a voice cry out sharply, and a hand helped me to my feet.
It was Gresson, and he seemed excited.

'God, Mr Brand, that was a close call! I was coming up to find
you, when this damned ship took to lying on her side. I guess I
must have cannoned into you, and I was calling myself bad names
when I saw you rolling into the Atlantic. If I hadn't got a grip on
the rope I would have been down beside you. Say, you're not hurt?
I reckon you'd better come below and get a glass of rum under
your belt. You're about as wet as mother's dish-clouts.'

There's one advantage about campaigning. You take your luck
when it comes and don't worry about what might have been. I
didn't think any more of the business, except that it had cured me
of wanting to be sea-sick. I went down to the reeking cabin without
one qualm in my stomach, and ate a good meal of welsh-rabbit and
bottled Bass, with a tot of rum to follow up with. Then I shed my
wet garments, and slept in my bunk till we anchored off a village in
Mull in a clear blue morning.

It took us four days to crawl up that coast and make Oban, for
we seemed to be a floating general store for every hamlet in those
parts. Gresson made himself very pleasant, as if he wanted to atone
for nearly doing me in. We played some poker, and I read the little
books I had got in Colonsay, and then rigged up a fishing-line, and
caught saithe and lythe and an occasional big haddock. But I found
the time pass slowly, and I was glad that about noon one day we